When the Good Get Going, the Going Gets Tough

An unforeseen factor may exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: migration out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Jordanian officials reckon at least 100,000 Palestinians have left the West Bank to work illegally in their country since the intifadeh began. (Israeli sources put the number at about 50,000.) An additional 40,000 Palestinians have fled for the U.S., South America and Egypt. In a population of 3 million under Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, that’s a sizable flight, with sizable consequences. Those who leave tend to worry more about making a living than about politics; it’s the hardliners who stay. The same is true for Israeli settlers. Some of them, motivated by ideology or religious fervor, will never leave. But hundreds of families who moved to the settlements for cheaper apartments and government subsidies have already fled, and more would do so if the value of their homes had not collapsed.

–Reported by Matt Rees and Jamil Hamad/Amman and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem